Data Driven Care Provision

In order to meet the challenges in today’s care provision, Trusts will need to change from being simply automated (using computer systems) to being data driven, using data to inform and predict care provision choices, actions and strategies. This major transition will take considerable time and effort, but it is the only way NHS Trusts will be able to achieve the efficiencies required under today’s financial constraints, whilst also improving patient care outcomes.

Analytics

Effective data driven organisations rely heavily on the effectiveness and accuracy of their analytics, which in turn rely on the availability and accuracy of data. A major challenge faced by all those involved in analytics is that of preparing the data that they are going to analyse.

For most organisations the IT department are the custodians of data. When analysts want data they have to prepare a specification of the data required, often only to find that data is not as they’d expected (data quality issues, ranges etc.) or that their requirements have (or had to) change in the intervening time. This often leads to a highly iterative process consuming considerable resource, with over 80% of most analytics projects being consumed in this process.

To address these issues organisations are now adopting a more “self-service” approach, providing analysts & business users with tools to enable them to access, integrate and interrogate data to meet their needs. This approach is saving staff considerable time and frustration, reducing the opportunity cost by enabling quicker access to the results. Organisations are able to address issues or capitalise on opportunities more immediately. While increasing analysts’ productivity, such tools give analysts the agility to enhance the depth and diversity of their analytics generating results that otherwise would not have been considered.

Critical to this approach is the need for effective governance, especially in relation to new and evolving regulations such as GDPR.

Talend’s solution to this is to provide the users the functionality to achieve their objectives with their view of the data, without allowing them the ability to modify or delete data without engaging the relevant data owners (IT or departmental heads) to approve or reject.

Once approved the changes required can be effected with a switch that generates all the code required, thus minimising the effort of the IT staff and the delays in provisioning of the resultant data sets.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is the latest aid to analytics and data driven strategies. A form of artificial intelligence, applications with machine learning are can be taught to develop an understanding of the data and objectives of any analytics. The application can then be used to identify more relevant data to aid or enrich the analytic process and outcome.

All Talend data platforms include Talend Data Preparation and Talend’s Big Data Platform includes Machine Learning. Furthermore, all Talend data platforms can be upgraded to the Big Data or Real-time Big Data Platforms without change or modification to any existing Talend routines.